Columns

Republican Vern Buchanan has represented Sarasota, Florida, in the U.S. House of Representatives since 2007. He won reelection in 2016 by 20 points. He’s a wealthy former car dealer who hasn’t lacked campaign funds. Nor did his son James, who ran in Tuesday’s special election to replace a retiring GOP state legislator from the same area. But James’s story turned out differently from his father’s. He lost to Democrat Margaret Good by seven points.

In 2012, when the space shuttle Discovery flew above Washington, D.C., on its way to retirement at the National Air and Space Museum, a reporter asked astronaut Anna Fisher if she had any advice for a boy who wanted to travel to the stars. Sure, Fisher said. “Study Russian.”

The Democrats are like characters in a Bill Murray movie. They keep reliving the same day, trapped in the rhythms and routines of campaign 2016. They persist in the rhetoric, tropes, gestures, figures, and policies that delivered the presidency, the Congress, and the bulk of statehouses and governor’s mansions to the Republican Party. What they can’t escape is identity politics—the slicing and dicing of the electorate by race, sex, orientation, gender identity, country of origin, dietary preference, what have you. Meanwhile President Trump has run off with the most saleable of the Democrats’ old issues and the foundations of their coalition. You’d think they’d notice.

A good day for a writer is one in which a metaphor falls into his lap. That happened recently when I read a behind-the-scenes report on the government shutdown. During the Democrats’ brief and pointless exercise in immaturity, a bipartisan group of senators met regularly in the office of Susan Collins of Maine. Puzzled by what had brought them to this point, and desperate for a way to live up to their not-entirely-deserved reputations as moderate, clear-thinking, responsible statesmen, the Republicans and Democrats were looking for a way out.

Oh, to have been a fly on the wall in Elizabeth Warren’s house as people went crazy over the prospect of Oprah 2020. I can only imagine Warren’s reaction. Did she yell at the TV? Mutter under her breath? Immediately call her media consultant in panic?

Shows you what I know. In the final days of December I told friends that 2018 might turn out to be a year of normalcy: an economic boom, a president with a win in the form of a tax bill, a Russia investigation stumbling toward its inevitable conclusion. It took less than 72 hours for 2018 to prove me wrong.

Nothing has been more tedious over the last year than the constant reminders that good journalism is “now more important than ever.” The implication, of course, is that solid, groundbreaking reporting was not as essential so long as a liberal Democrat was in power. I’ve long assumed that the factotums mouthing such clichés lack the self-awareness to understand the true import of their words. But maybe I’ve been wrong. Recent days brought evidence that, no, liberals really mean it: the only meaningful investigative work is that which reflects poorly on Republicans.

Very soon, President Trump will have to decide whether America should remain a bystander to Iranian expansionism or take steps to confront this menace to international security and sponsor of global terrorism.

CNN informs me there are “at least” 22 Democrats thinking of running for president in 2020. So who among them had the best 2017? Below is my list, in descending order, of the strongest members of the emerging 2020 Democratic field, along with some thoughts on their political fortunes. Spoiler alert: It’s not a pretty sight.